Looking Back to the New Wave of Microsoft Certifications

Since I wrote my last blog post in April, I have been busy updating my other, Spanish-speaking blog, together with learning a lot about Windows 8 and SharePoint 2013. I will try to write more frequently here, as I feel that this English-speaking blog also has a place in the Net. I intend to keep the other relevant to local topics and focus this one more on thoughts and opinions about the SharePoint/NET/Microsoft spectrum.

As a token of good faith, I will pick up the latest post. It involved the new wave of Microsoft certifications. In my opinion, the “Cloud-built” prefix is a misnomer, because there are more changes than just including the cloud-related questions into the process. But, being Microsoft means playing hard on the marketing side of the things and stick with a pervasive name (can you remember the “.NET” prefix in the 2002-03 and the “Live” prefix until now?), so we have to keep reading between the lines for some time.

The “old” MS certifications (left) and the new wave of certifications (“Cloud-built” ones, on the right)

Since writing the blog post, I took two new-wave beta exams: 70-486 (Developing ASP.NET 4.5 MVC Web Applications) and 70-484 (Essentials of Developing Windows Metro style Apps using C#). Of course, as per Microsoft Learning NDA, I can’t exactly tell you what is in the exam, but I can give an opinion on them:

• The exams are much more relevant to the real work experience. Congratulations on that, Microsoft Learning!
• The difficulty bar is set a little bit higher than before, ensuring the prestige of the certification
• The questions allow for much more uncertainty, thus reducing the possibility of guess by discarding the non-logical answers in the multiple choice questions
• The testing software is still somewhat rough around the edges, I experienced occasional glitches and hangups, but when restarted the exam continued as expected

I have two more beta exams to take this month: 70-483 (Programming in C#) and 70-485 (Advanced Metro Style App Development using C#) and I’m looking forward to it.